Dark Eidolon
by Kherezae
Summary: When a timestreamer runs across a heartless mid-stream, she opens the world of the Teen Titans to a whole new threat -- one the Titans can't defeat. With history off-course, the Titans will have to join Sora if they want to set things right.
1. Prelude: World Connected, Time Shattered

**author's note**

Teen Titans / Kingdom Hearts crossover. Set during Kingdom Hearts 1, and in the first season or two of Teen Titans. Due to the involvement of time travel, this branches off into an alternate timeline where the Titans meet Sora and the others, making it semi-AU.

* * *

**Prologue****  
World Connected, Time Shattered**

The feeling the timestream gave her was indescribable. She felt superior—she felt like a goddess. When time could not touch her, she was all-powerful, supreme.

She was a time thief. One of many. The time thieves watched for openings in history—something gone missing, never to be found—and they pounced on them. They sent a thief to retrieve it and bring it to the future. It always brought a small fortune. Time thieves were some of the richest people alive in her time period—and the most secretive.

She felt the years flash by so fast that she couldn't see them. She was sheltered in her timestreaming suit—the years flashing past could not harm her. She remained aloof, young, invincible against time in her close-fitting black armor with its chronotrigger over her chest. Time could not touch her; she was immortal.

Timestreaming was tricky business, but she was well-versed in what to do. Timestreams ran in the cracks between worlds, between universes, in the folds where reality wasn't quite real. Navigating the touchy timestreams was delicate work. It was foolhardy to pay more attention to the beauty of the stream than she had to in order to keep herself from missing her year. She was going far back into days that were ancient to the people of her time. Still, she couldn't help but marvel at the years streaming past; the timestream looked like liquid blackness, the years merely reflections off of the inky black stuff of the stream.

She had at least a century to go before she reached her year. She itched to reach her prize, her destination, but she longed to remain in the timestream forever—here, she was invincible. Here, she was ageless.

She gave a start and nearly veered off course when she felt something colder than death touch her leg. She could feel it even through her suit. She steadied herself immediately; veering off course was dangerous. She might be lucky and merely veer into the current time of some world or another, or she might end up in space, crushed by the black oblivion—or even in a hole between universes, frozen into nonexistence. She took a look ahead, measuring far enough that she could spare a brief look down at her leg without falling out of the timestream; panic was descending on her, but she fought it, retreating into the sanctuary of her mindless training.

A look at the creature on her leg nearly stopped her heart. It was blacker than night, blacker than the deepest darkness, with wicked-sharp claws and glowing yellow orbs that peered straight into her soul. She knew without a doubt that it was pure evil. It clawed at her leg, not giving her flesh wounds, but tearing into the very fabric of her soul. She could feel the warmth of her life seeping out into the creature, yet its touch on her leg grew no warmer. If anything, it grew colder with the intense bitterness of longing for something, being so close, and yet being unable to touch it.

She felt as if she was being ripped apart. She screamed, but no sound came from her throat in the timestream. This was a path that ran in the folds of the universe where reality was but a shadow; there was no sound here.

She felt the warmth of life leaving. She lost control. She veered from the timestream, but by the time she fell from it, she had no consciousness left to register where she had ended up.

#

Maleficent felt a change—a subtle change—and she gave a small start. The gathered villains stared at her, thinking her mad but unsure whether they had the bravery to say so, for she had cut herself off in the middle of a sentence. She ignored their puzzled, questioning stares and closed her eyes, feeling out the alteration in the flow of darkness she was connected to.

There. There it was. Another world had been connected, but in an unusual way. It didn't feel quite right. The darkness was there… But the world's heart had not been opened. She could not imagine how the heartless had reached the world without the call of its unlocked heart to guide them, but they had.

She would not waste her good fortune.

"You know what to do with the girl," she said to the four gathered around an ordinary table she had enchanted with a spell of Sight. She spoke in her normal tone—a slow, paced, and aloof voice—but her urgency was unmistakable by the glitter of sudden pleasure in her eyes. "I am needed elsewhere." She gestured out widely with her staff, indicating the desert princess lying on the carpet not ten feet from their meeting table, her expression troubled and fearful even in unconsciousness. Her cheek rested on the back of one hand as she lay half on her side and half on her belly; the golden chain in her hair was cockeyed and dark strands of the thick hair fell over her face in disarray.

"That brat's up to no good, isn't he?" Hades asked, irritable as ever, as he smoothed back his flaming 'hair' with one hand. "Just about as useful as that Cloud was… Can't get anything right…"

Maleficent cast a sharp glance Hades' way. Anyone else would have been cowed by the presence of the lord of the dead; the witch was far from afraid of him, however, and left no doubt in his mind about her ability to crush him on a whim. He was immortal, but she could seal him in his underworld for a good long time if she needed to. "Riku is just where he needs to be," she said evenly, gripping her staff tightly. Had her skin not already been as pale as death, her knuckles would have whitened with the force of her grip. "Don't worry about him."

"You don't know where he is!" Ursula surmised correctly, laughing wickedly. The sea witch's apparent need to cackle constantly grated on Maleficent's nerves, but she ignored it. She also ignored the truth behind the witch's words.

"The boy's whereabouts are of no concern to you. That I know them is all you need hear." She turned from the gathering of villains, her jaw clenched tightly. Her power was all that kept her at the head of this band of villains; they had no respect for her other than fear of her magic and her power over the heartless. She didn't let that irritate her, though; she knew that, without her guidance, these four would be nowhere. Like Jafar; he had been weak. The darkness had consumed him.

"I think Ursula is right," Oogie Boogie said in that smooth voice of his—it was a voice that never failed to make Maleficent's spine stiffen with loathsome irritation. The mockery of it… She shook it off, ignoring the shared laugh that met Oogie Boogie's words. With a grim half-smile, she reminded herself that the smooth-talking villain was no more than a sack of filth.

"Concern yourselves with the princess," Maleficent said, her voice even and free of emotion. She cast a pointed glance over at Jasmine, taking in the woman's scanty blue desert clothes. She didn't try to hide her disgust at the Arabian princess wearing such skimpy attire, but she hid even from herself the twinge of jealousy. Beneath her heavy robes, she was little more than pale, stretched skin and bones. She could never wear the things that the beautiful young princess could. "I will deal with the boy… After I have taken care of this."

She didn't wait to hear their reactions. She turned her attention inward, traveling across her link with the darkness. She loved the darkness. It washed over her in waves, trying to draw her in, trying to drown her in its beautiful cold majesty, but she coaxed it down. No, no, my child, she told it. How will I bring you more light to devour if I am consumed? The darkness subsided at her command, her will, though it responded to her emotion and rough concepts on a baser level than her actual thought. She followed its tide as it led her obediently toward the slight change she'd noticed earlier. It was infinitesimally small, just a single heartless, but it was enough.

It felt as if minutes had passed before she found the single tiny link to the new world, but she knew it to be mere seconds. She focused upon the heartless, drawing herself to it, willing herself away. Within, she felt slowly, tantalizingly drawn to the single seed of darkness planted in a fresh new world. Without, the other villains watched as she simply disappeared in a swirl of darkness that seemed to suck the light from the room, taking all her spells with her; they could not be sustained outside her presence.

Without her spells, the villains suddenly had something to contend with. The spell of Sight on their meeting table faded out of existence; the spells keeping the princesses deeply asleep lost their potency, and the four of them had to deal with a loud little girl struggling against her physical bonds and a beautiful, noble young woman from the desert who knew how to fight and was not yet bound. Maleficent was right; they had the princesses to concern themselves with. They had no time to worry about Riku, a wandering teen who had somehow made his way off their radar.

#

He sensed the disturbance immediately, and he turned from the lifeless body on the ground of his lair—a body that had appeared only moments ago, accompanied by one dark being that quickly multiplied to two. Both dark creatures eyed him hungrily with huge, glowing yellow orbs that would have been comical set in their small, shadowy heads had they not been so clearly… evil. There was nothing funny about these creatures.

He felt a connection to both. They obeyed when he commanded them to stay back, though they still watched him with hunger burning in their eerie yellow eyes, swaying back and forth in motions that varied erratically between smoothly rhythmic dips and jumpy, jerky bobs.

He turned as he sensed a new disturbance. He was certain that nothing else could surprise him today. He was wrong.

Standing in the middle of the secretive lair he kept tucked firmly beneath his adversaries' radar was a tall woman clad in dark robes that covered all but her white, bony hands and her pale, sharp-angled face. She held herself with a regal air as she stood. She had a staff topped with a green orb in one hand, the dark sleeves of her robe falling from that raised hand to reveal a purple underside to the cloth. She clearly had a lot of pride and, if he wasn't much mistaken, power to match it. She fairly crackled with power to his keen eye. Topping her head was a black cap with two horn-like projections extending from it; such a thing would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but she wore it as well as a king wore his crown.

She looked around with alert eyes filled with intelligence, searching the chamber she found herself in. Apparently she found it to her liking, because she turned her intense, powerful gaze on the owner of the lair, giving a grim smile. "You must be this world's representative of darkness," she murmured in a voice that carried perfectly despite its low volume. "I am Maleficent, guardian of darkness."

He matched her gaze without faltering or flinching. "Darkness. I live in darkness," he replied, his voice carrying a hint of dark humor. "It represents me more than I represent it."

She inclined her head approvingly. "Something has changed," she told him. He didn't know precisely what she meant, but he caught the hint of something great, dark, and important—something he had to be part of. Such was his nature. "This world wasn't supposed to be connected. But the change can be a good one. If only I could understand what caused it…"

He stepped aside with a dark smirk that she couldn't see beneath his two-toned mask, revealing the soulless timestreamer with the two dark creatures standing at her side. "This time thief had something to do with it, I imagine," he said calmly.

"Ah," Maleficent murmured, and she smiled darkly, highly pleased about something. She moved her staff forward as she eyed the dead time thief, letting it click against the floor. "Time has been altered by the heartless. Only chaos can follow." She returned her gaze to him, her smile widening. "Chaos is the greatest darkness."

"There is one thing darker," the man said evenly, watching the witch woman as she grew curious. "Manipulating chaos into an order you can control."

She nodded, satisfied by his response. "Yes, you are certainly this world's representative of darkness. What is your name?"

"You can call me Slade," he replied coolly, inclining his head in introduction. He kept his hands crossed behind his back as he watched her, patiently waiting for events to unfold, carrying with them the answers to the curiosity he burned with.

"Slade, then," Maleficent agreed. She strode up to him, her robes whispering over the cold, dark floor of his lair, and she offered a thin arm. "Come with me. I will explain everything to you."

He regarded the offered arm a moment, keeping his thoughts hidden beneath a cool exterior and, further, the mask he wore, and then he took her arm in his. "Yes. I'd like to know what is going on."

He let the witch lead him into darkness. He took it all in calmly. He would find a way to make this new development work to his advantage—he always did. He was something of an enigma. The darkness longed for him, hungered for him, but warily kept away, afraid of what it didn't understand about him.

He was Slade.

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**author's note**

This chapter is hopelessly old. I wrote it ages ago. I have one more chapter equally as old already written. I do have a plot for this story, but I don't intend to continue it past the first two chapters unless there is interest in it. So if you want to read more, please review. And please keep in mind that my writing style will change somewhat after the second chapter, as it will go from 6-year-old writing to current.


	2. One: Misplaced in Darkness

**1  
Misplaced in Darkness**

The rain poured down around him, but he didn't care. He welcomed it. Maybe he would catch a cold from it and, not caring enough to buy medicine for it, he would die from it. Die from something so simple as a cold—he laughed bitterly at the thought. Him? No. He spent his life fighting. Every fight he escaped was lucky. He doubted he would live to see middle age.

His friends hadn't. That had been one battle they hadn't been lucky enough to escape. He pounded another punch into the bag, pouring all his strength into it, training himself sick in the vain hope that he could beat his way to his friends.

He couldn't. They had been taken by darkness—through some sort of portal he couldn't understand. He hadn't been able to save them.

That had been two days ago. He hadn't eaten or rested since. He'd pounded through the weight room and the outdoor obstacle course, where he was now. He was exhausted, but he refused to rest—he'd let his friends down. He had to train hard, fight to save them.

There was nothing to fight. The dark storm had subsided. There weren't even any more of the dark creatures to fight. He'd killed mountains of them, and so had his friends, but no matter how many they took out, more seemed to come. Raven had felt a bond with the creatures of darkness; at one point, he hardly remembered when, she had explained that they weren't really killing the creatures. They didn't have the power. They merely dispelled them from their material forms, and the dark beings reformed not far away.

He felt so useless. He was so absorbed in thought that he didn't realize that his punches came minutes apart. At first he had pounded the punching bag with a fury and thunderous speed that had torn through one over time, rendering it useless. Still he had punched its supporting beam until his knuckles bled.

He ran over what had happened for the hundredth time. They had been in the Tower just enjoying themselves, enjoying a surprisingly long stretch of time when there had been no calls to battle. He should have realized that the quiet time was just the lull before a vengeful storm; he hounded himself for the foolish mistake as the rain soaked him to the bone.

"What's that?" Cyborg had asked, staring up into the sky through the large Tower window during an off turn at the Gamestation.

Robin had offered only a cursory glance at the sky before returning his attention to pounding the game controls as he tried to beat Beast Boy at a race. How stupid. If only he had realized how important that storm was… "Just a storm, Cyborg."

"No, look," the big teen said, looking over his shoulder at the boys furiously competing on the Gamestation. "It's not an ordinary storm. There's something… Just come look."

Robin reluctantly paused the game to a startled, annoyed, "Hey," from Beast Boy and looked up at the darkening sky. What he saw made him forget his race with Beast Boy altogether. "Whoa." He hopped over the back of the couch to join Cyborg at the window, craning his neck to look up at the burgeoning storm.

Cyborg was right. It was no ordinary storm. The dark cloud in the sky looked like nothing so much as a huge, gaping, dark maw. Lightning lanced through it like no lightning he had ever seen—it was all different colors, with red predominating. Howling winds picked up, tearing across the water surrounding the Tower and through the city the Tower loomed over protectively. It rattled through the loose pipe work of their ten-story home, giving Robin the chills.

"And look," Cyborg added, pointing toward the city with one thick, robotic finger. In the streets ran dark shadows that looked like nothing so much as the stuff of nightmares.

"What's going on?" Beast Boy asked, coming up behind him, his height easily dwarfed by that of his two friends. He smoothed back his green hair and peered up into the sky, and then his eyes widened. He followed Cyborg's finger to the city and asked weakly, "What _is_ that?"

"Some new trick of Slade's, I bet," Cyborg said darkly, crossing his arms over his chest with a metallic ringing.

"Darkness," Raven said simply in her flat, gravelly voice. All three boys jumped; they had forgotten her presence in the room. She strode up beside them, looking gravely out the window, her expressionless face revealing nothing.

"What are you all talking about?" Starfire asked in her permanently cheery voice, straightening from her hunt through the mini-fridge for anything edible. She shut the refrigerator's door without thought as she caught sight of the dark storm, making her way toward the window.

"Uh, shouldn't we… _do_ something about this?" Beast Boy asked, scratching his head as he watched the maw in the sky, unable to draw his eyes away from it.

"I don't know what we _can_ do," Raven replied, and though her voice was flat, they all caught the faintest hint of hopelessness in it.

"Raven," Robin asked, looking at her closely, "what is it?" He knew she felt something in this storm of darkness, something that chilled her.

"I'm not sure," she answered, her eyes searching the sky. She gave a faint shudder and drew her cloak close about her. "I don't like it. It's dark. Just dark."

"Oh!" Star exclaimed, pointing toward the city. "Look there! What are those shadows doing to that woman?" Following her line of sight, Robin saw a woman holding a baby, both little bigger than his fingertip at this distance, being attacked by dark shadow creatures. At first the woman fought violently, clearly afraid, but then her movement slowed until she fell without a care for the baby in her arms. The creatures swarmed over her for a moment, and then they lost interest in her, turning away hungrily and looking for something new to attack.

"They took her soul," Raven whispered, her voice holding the barest hint of fear, but even that small amount of emotion was unusual in her flat tone.

Robin turned a grim look on his fellow Titans and nodded to them. "Let's go," he said. They immediately burst into motion, splitting up to take the fastest routes they could out of the Tower. They had to fight this new menace.

That was what Robin regretted most. He had given the order that they go fight. He hadn't seen a single shadow creature in the Tower; instead, he ordered the Titans out into the heart of the danger. If he had only kept quiet, let them stay where they were, they might all be safe now…

_No,_ said a small voice in the back of his mind as he pounded another punch into his defenseless punching bag. _They would have gone with or without my signal._ But he couldn't stifle the guilt—he didn't want to. The guilt, the rain, the exhaustion… all felt justified.

He was nothing without his friends.

He had led them into danger. They'd gone into the city, fighting, trying to save the people they had sworn to protect. For every one person they saved, another three were taken by the dark creatures. Still they'd fought, even when Raven told them how useless their battle was. They were the Teen Titans—they didn't just give up. They would all be long dead if they simply gave up when things looked hopeless.

The worst time had been when they saw a man they'd saved an hour earlier taken down by a shadow creature. To know that they had saved him only to buy him another hour of life, an hour lived in fear as he ran from the dark beings, struck all of them harshly. But they still hadn't given up.

And after four long hours of fighting, they had all been growing exhausted. Robin had watched as, one by one, his friends fell into dark portals. He had been too tired to really wonder how and why his friends fell into portals rather than just being taken by the shadow creatures, but he had pondered it many times since then.

It meant they could still be alive. Somewhere. He had to find them. But he didn't know how or where to look, so he just trained. He would be strong when he finally got the chance to save his friends—he wouldn't fail them twice.

He wouldn't betray their trust. Not again. Not when he appreciated them more than ever. He had just realized how very important to him they were, and now there were gone to who-knew-where.

When he punched the bag this time, his arm gave out. He fell against the punching bag, his wet hair clinging to his face as it never did when it was dry. It seemed to add to the hopelessness of his situation. His cloak weighed heavy on his shoulders, his belt at his waist, his arms at his sides, his metal-trimmed boots on his feet. He was exhausted.

He could just close his eyes, just for a while, and rest with the lulling rain falling all around.

But he refused to let himself do it. If he closed his eyes, if he rested, he would fall asleep. It was something he needed desperately, and therefore he couldn't have it. He had failed his friends. He didn't deserve it.

When he saw it, he thought at first that it must be a trick of his exhaustion. But then, blinking his eyes, he realized that it was as real as his grief over the fact that his friends were gone. Hovering in the air beyond his punching bag was a dark portal, different from the ones his friends had fallen into only because it hovered upright in the air rather than forming flat on the ground.

He didn't hesitate. His weariness evaporated, and he sprinted toward the portal, leaping the last two yards to dive right through. He didn't even hear his own furious scream pounding in his ears.

He fell into the darkness.

**xx**

Sora hardly even noticed the strange girl who hovered behind the boy who had been his friend; he was too focused on Riku, Pinocchio in his arms, unable to believe that he would be against Sora like this. "Riku—don't side with the heartless!"

"Only by allying with them can I hope to find a way to help Kairi," Riku growled. "If you cared for her like I do, you would help me!"

"I'm trying to help Kairi!" Sora cried. "But the darkness isn't gonna help her!"

Riku shook his head, throwing his hand toward Sora with his palm facing outward. Though he was halfway across the mushy chamber of Monstro's belly, some unseen force pushed Sora, Donald, and Goofy back—when Sora looked over his shoulder, he saw a dark portal hovering in the air. Donald and Goofy fell through; he tried to stop himself, leaning forward and pushing against the force Riku was using to propel him back, but he could make no leeway. He felt the darkness of the portal closing in behind him…

And then he collided roughly with a rather bony, muscled… Something. The portal snapped shut with a hiss, the unnerving chill it cast on Sora's back evaporating. "Mmph!" whatever he had collided with exclaimed, and both fell in a jumble of tangled limbs.

Sora didn't waste time seeing who or what had saved him from the portal; his head snapped up, and he watched as Riku began to run from the room, his footsteps squelching against the soft tissue of Monstro's belly. The smell was horrible, but he was used to it by now.

"Riku! Wait!" he yelled, disengaging himself from what turned out to be a boy around Riku's age in a ridiculous costume with black hair and a mask around his eyes. He looked after Riku again. "What are you gonna to do with Pinocchio?!"

Riku shot back, "If this puppet can have a heart… maybe he can show me how to save Kairi… since she lost hers."

"What?" Sora stopped as if slapped, the words ringing in his head. "No…"

But Riku wasn't listening. He was running from the room, the strange shadow-girl hovering after him.

The teen who had saved Sora from falling through the dark portal sprinted forward, his cape billowing out behind him, as he yelled, "Raven, wait!"

The girl who was able to float through the air turned back to him, waving her arm out in an arc. Energy that was only dimly visible in the air as a dark, crackling veil formed in front of the caped teen in a similar arc, and he couldn't stop in time to avoid running into it, the collision soundless but obviously less than pleasant. "I am not done here," her voice came, flat and toneless. It reminded Sora of Riku's voice… but darker. It sent chills down his spine.

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**author's note**

Another six-year-old chapter. If I post more, it'll be written new, which will make for certain differences. Hopefully all for the better! Anyway, I do have a rough plot outline for this, and I'll continue it if anyone cares to read it, just let me know. :)


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